One of the many depressing aspects of Obama's horrific decision to start a third simultaneous war with a Muslim-majority nation is that it's providing endless pangs of pleasure to Bill Kristol. After all, America's Chickenhawk-in-Chief hasn't been able to watch other people risk their asses invading a sovereign country since 2003 and he's just as thrilled and excited about this latest adventure as you'd expect him to be:

And so, despite his doubts and dithering, President Obama is taking us to war in another Muslim country. Good for him.

No, seriously. That's how Kristol actually starts out his column. Read it again:

And so, despite his doubts and dithering, President Obama is taking us to war in another Muslim country. Good for him.

It's hard for most of us to comprehend the sort of vile vampiric scumbag who relishes the thought of having his country go to war in three different countries at the same time, but that's pretty much how Bill Kristol rolls. I wonder what would happen if America successfully invaded the entire world -- whatever would Kristol do to pleasure himself? Perhaps he'd recommend sending our entire army into the depths of the Pacific Ocean to launch a long-overdue war against the lost city of Atlantis. Those shifty Mermen have had it coming for a long time, after all.

More:

The president didn’t want this. He’s been so unhappy about such a possibility—so fearful of such an eventuality—that first he tied himself in knots trying to do nothing. Then he decided that, if he had to act, it would be good to boast that he was merely following the Arab League and subordinating American action to the U.N. Security Council. After all, nothing—nothing!—could be worse than the perception that the United States was “invading” another Muslim country.

Yeah, where the hell did we get this stigma about "invading" Muslim countries from? It's not like anyone's ever died from such "invasions" before. Why, you'd think it was as bad as trying to give people health insurance!

In all seriousness, Kristol is just happy to be starting another war, since apparently the Afghanistan conflict has gotten so BOE-RING! The one downer for him is that Obama bothered to get the UN's permission to attack Libya rather than going all in and giving other countries the finger like Bush did. Kristol is at his absolute happiest when our country is both at war and defying the will of the international community. But he'll happily take the war all the same.

Rubbish. Our “invasions” have in fact been liberations.

They have liberated many people from their lives, yes.

We have shed blood and expended treasure in Kuwait in 1991, in the Balkans later in the 1990s, and in Afghanistan and Iraq—in our own national interest, of course, but also to protect Muslim peoples and help them free themselves. Libya will be America’s fifth war of Muslim liberation.

It's amazing that after five glorious wars, the Middle East isn't yet a mecca of sunshine, lollipops, rainbows and everything that's wonderful that I feel when we're together. But of course, there's always the option of starting a sixth war, which I'm sure will make everything better.

[T]he Reagan tradition—indeed, the Reagan-Bush-Dole-Bush-McCain tradition—in foreign policy isn’t a burden to be borne. It’s a tradition to be proud of. It’s rare that a political party gets to stand for more than a partial interest, for more than a limited point of view. It’s rare that a political party gets to stand for the national interest, for national greatness, for the exceptional American role in the liberation of peoples around the globe.

I'm amazed that Kristol can't type this crap without God coming down from the heavens, striking Kristol down with all manner of lightning and saying, "I didst err when I made thee, vile spawn of darkness!" In case Bill hasn't noticed, we're facing massive cuts to public education, to social safety net programs and even to services as basic as public street lights. And yet Kristol thinks we should sacrifice all of these things on his bloody altar of permanent warfare.

Thanks for aiding his agenda, Obama!

h/t Media Matters for the video.

Let's pretend you're CNN--the "Worldwide Leader In News"--and you want to do a news feature on Liz Cheney's new ad smearing the Department of Justice via her new group, Keep America Safe, founded by Cheney and "Bloody Bill" Kristol. Do you:

1. Point out that Keep America Safe was founded to promote the Bush/Cheney Doctrine, which…
   1. Was based on lies;
   2. Was overwhelmingly rejected by the voters in 2008;
   3. Dragged this country’s reputation into ground worldwide;
   4. Champions fear and smears, over intelligence and diplomacy;
   5. Is a violation of everything this country is supposed to have stood for.
2. Suggest that Liz Cheney is trying to paint the Department of Justice (which is still staffed with many, many Bush appointees) into a political corner that makes any future attempt at holding the previous administration responsible for their malfeasance and illegal activities look like a partisan witch hunt.
3. Tally the number of times that Liz Cheney and her partner Bill Kristol have been correct in their assessments in their hundreds of hours of airtime: which is, not to put too fine a point on it, NEVER.
4. Or like Rachel Maddow, demonstrate how their insidious and poor logic could be applied to anyone, including Liz Cheney herself, as an Al Qaeda sympathizer.

No, no, no...you silly liberal expecting journalism from Wolf Blitzer. Wolfie simply regurgitates Cheney's talking points, right down to the ridiculous name-calling (Department of Jihad? Really? You would have lost what little is left of your mind if someone said that during the Bush Administration, Lizzy. How disgusting.) for a full eight minute segment, blissfully unhampered by this little thing called reality.

As Glenzilla puts it, Murrow is spinning in his grave:

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(h/t Heather)

Has there ever been a worse man running a political organization than Micheal Steele? I mean, I agree with his take here from the other day on Hannidate, but I doubt his RNC peeps do. They attacked him the following day which made him back off. I have to say he's been a really interesting character. He's stuck more shoes in his mouth than any politician that comes to memory since Kristol's boy named Dan Quayle. I do hope they don't fire him because he gives us so much material to work with.

HANNITY: Predictions for the election?

STEELE: Predictions for the election, I think that overall -- and we're beginning now to do the assessments on the various races. But I think overall, given what we know so far and what this administration's proclivities are, we're going to see, I think, nice pick-ups in the House. I think we're going to see nice...

HANNITY: More specific.

STEELE: Well, I can't give a number right yet. Because like I said, we're just now beginning to look at the races. And we have races where it hasn't been clear...

HANNITY: Do you think you can take over the House? Do you think Republicans...

STEELE: Not this year. And Sean, I would say honestly.

HANNITY: You don't think so?

STEELE: Well, I don't know yet, because all the candidates we still have vacancies that need to get filled. But then the question we need to ask ourselves is, if we do that, are we ready?

HANNITY: Are you?

STEELE: Are we...

HANNITY: Answer your own question. Are we -- do you think they're ready?

STEELE: I don't know. And that's what I'm assessing and evaluating right now. Those candidates that are looking to run have to be -- have to be anchored in these principles. They have to be -- they have to understand...

HANNITY: I'm agreeing with what you're saying. I think...

STEELE: They have to understand these steps, because if they don't, then they'll get to Washington, and they'll start drinking that Potomac River water. And they'll get drunk with power and...

Honesty is a deadly word when you're a conservative. The NRCC responded this way.

"The NRCC's goal - as the campaign arm of the House Republican Conference - has always been to recapture the majority in 2010. Independent political analysts and even liberal columnists have stated that Republicans have a very real shot at taking back the majority in 2010. Make no mistake about it, we are playing to win," said Ken Spain, NRCC Communications Director.

Fox surpassed even its own standards for surrealism last Sunday, when all the Clowns at the Fox Circus shared a giant hanky about the White House Party Crashers and awful awfulness of our celebrity-sick culture.

Yes, that’s right: the degenerate sons of Mike Wallace and Irving Kristol…sitting on the set of their fake news show…collecting paychecks for telling lies to stupid people...pretending to be stunned that some fortune-seeking, second-generation, spoiled rich twat of a con artist would use his contacts and blond arm-candy to break the last, sacred seal -- the rules of Beltway party-going--to get his own teevee show.

The horror.

[Excerpted from here. Thanks Blue Gal for the graphic assist.]

Open Thread below...

WhyTF would David Gregory use a newspaper that is the lowest form of journalism tabloid crap when it comes to politics? Rupert Murdoch's pet paper is a conservative teabaggers' guide to Crazyland and NOBODY takes them seriously in any way.

ESPN even cut off their sports reporters because the NY POST published nude pictures of Erin Andrews when she had her privacy violated and every other publication chose not to do so. It infuriated ESPN so much that they refused to put any of them on the air.

ESPN retaliated Wednesday against the New York Post for its decision to use still images of Erin Andrews from a surreptitiously obtained videotape, banning Post staffers from its various outlets, including its TV networks and 1050 ESPN Radio.

"In light of the New York Post's decision to run graphic photos of ESPN reporter Erin Andrews, we have decided to stop utilizing Post reporters on any of our outlets," ESPN's senior VP of communications, Chris LaPlaca said.

It's infuriating that the Sunday Talk Shows repeatedly will quote conservative columnists like Kristol, Brooks, Will and Krauthammer and ask a Democratic guest to respond. Rarely does a David Gregory reverse that and read a headline or column from a liberal columnist like a Rick Perlstein. EVER. The talking heads do their best to elevate conservative beliefs and transmitters to the highest status possible to the American public.

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald dedicates an entire column to make the point that the beltway weenies always blame the left for everything. No matter how many Blue Dogs and Baucus Dogs block health care, it's still our fault.

The prevailing Beltway wisdom has now ossified that the problem with the health care debate is that those hardened Leftist ideologues cling childishly and petulantly to their little "public option" fetish and their refusal to give it up is jeopardizing enactment of a reform bill. Just see The Washington Post Editorial Page, Post columnist Steve Pearlstein and Joe Klein -- and especially the below-documented behavior from Newsweek's Jonathan Alter -- this week blaming The Left, as always, for their childish extremism in the health care debate. As always, the obedient servitude of Blue Dogs and "centrists" to the industries that own Congress aren't obstructionist at all.

Somehow, the refusal of Blue Dogs to vote for a plan with a "public option" isn't impeding anything; there's no reason they should give anything up, because they're just being moderate and "centrist." As always, the way things should be done in Washington is that the proper scorn should be heaped on The Left until they're bullied into giving up what they believe so that Things Can Get Done (i.e., so that corporate dictates can be fulfilled)...read on

After Rep. Roy Blunt, leader of the supposed House GOP Health Care Solutions Group, suggested Thursday that Republicans won't offer a health care plan of their own, Minority Leader John Boehner insisted one was still in the works.

Of course, the Republican plan as in 1993 is to stop health care reform at all costs to prevent an enduring Democratic majority. Bill Kristol, who told Republicans 16 years ago that there was "no crisis" justifying health care reform then, now simply calls on his party to "kill it." With spinmeisters Frank Luntz and Alex Castellanos supplying the talking points that a supposed "government takeover of health care" is "too much, too fast, too soon," obstructionists like Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe boasted his party would "stall" President Obama's health care initiative to ensure a "huge gain" in the 2010 election. In a nutshell, the GOP is proposing to extend the status quo for a nation gripped by a collapsing health care system.

Here, then, is the Republican 10-Point Plan for Health Care:

1. 50 Million Uninsured in America
2. Another 25 Million Underinsured
3. Employer-Based Coverage Plummets Below 60%
4. Employer Health Costs to Jump by 9% in 2010
5. One in Five Americans Forced to Postpone Care
6. 62% of U.S. Bankruptcies Involve Medical Bills
7. Current Health Care Costs Already Fueling Job Losses
8. 94% of Health Insurance Markets in U.S Now "Highly Concentrated"
9. Dramatic Decline in Emergency Room Capacity
10. Perpetuating Red State Health Care Failure

For the details and data behind each, continue reading.

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I know this broke the other day, but I needed to hit it. William the Bloody Kristol passed on his wisdom for the American people and tells his Republican allies to hurt American families.

With Obamacare on the ropes, there will be a temptation for opponents to let up on their criticism, and to try to appear constructive, or at least responsible. There will be a tendency to want to let the Democrats' plans sink of their own weight, to emphasize that the critics have been pushing sound reform ideas all along and suggest it's not too late for a bipartisan compromise over the next couple of weeks or months.

My advice, for what it's worth: Resist the temptation. This is no time to pull punches. Go for the kill...read on

What a shock. I've was wondering what took him so long.

Ezra Klein responds:

Yawn. This is like saying that Keith Richards still can't get no satisfaction, or that the much-missed Rodney Dangerfield would appreciate a bit more respect. It's useful to remember here that Kristol is less a pundit than an operative. His job isn't to give his opinion. It's to give this opinion.

--

Bill Kristol is right that defeating Obama's health-care plan is a first step for Republicans who want to pick off vulnerable Democrats in the 2010 midterms. But the converse is also true: Passing health-care reform is the first step for vulnerable Democrats who want to save their seats.

I always remember what our own Nicole Belle said on 12/11/08:

Bill Kristol is NEVER right. And even Foreign Policy Magazine agrees with me, as they list the worst predictions of 2008 and who else but our favorite war-mongering chickenhawk neocon, William "The Bloody" Kristol

"...when he came to the place where the wild things are they roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws till Max said "BE STILL!" and tamed them with the magic trick of staring into all their yellow eyes without blinking once and they were frightened and called him the most wild thing of all..." - Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are.

Obama sails away a night and a day from the FOX Wild Things: Beck, O'Reilly, Coulter, Hannity, and Kristol.

Click here for larger image.

Open Thread below...

(h/t Heather)

Bill Kristol is upset that the release of the CIA torture memos will open up the potential for criminal prosecutions of Bush officials. William "the Bloody" Kristol wants to release all the CIA memos and have Dick Cheney testify about them. Wow, he even admits that torture is a crime, but brings up another right-wing canard: that releasing the CIA memos and more photographs of abuse hurts our national security.

(rough transcript)

Kristol: Torture is a crime, that is agreed upon. If these memos are so crazy, so ridiculous in their legal analysis ... three people being waterboarded, a few instances of waterboarding might not qualify as torture under certain circumstances, which is what the memos argued, then he (Obama) opened the door, and once he opened the door they're going down that road...

It's the Bush administration who authorized these things, they're still running against the Bush administration. Let's stipulate that the Bush administration did a lot for things wrong. How does that legitimize do something now that will damage our national security?

Williams: How does it damage out national security? I think when you have President Obama say somewhere we have lost our moral bearings. I don't think there's any doubt about that...

Kristol: There's a lot of doubt...

Williams: You said a moment ago that torture is illegal. You gotta remember President Reagan was out there signing the UN convention, we will not participate in torture as an American people. So something went wrong there.

Mara Liasson then argues about the Justice Department officials involved, and Brit Hume (as usual) just thinks it's all a farce. Yeah, torturing people is soooo comical, so inconsequential.

Mara: You might think that the lawyers of the Bush justice Department came out with a decision that was wrong, legally wrong and morally repugnant, but it doesn't mean that they committed a crime. That they said, ohhh we know this is torture, we're just going ot cook this up. The question is whether they did this in good faith or not. and if...

Hume: I predict Mara, based on what you're saying that any prosecution which will come out of this will be a total farce.

There will be a series of show trials with "grand inquisitions' and all the kinds of things we've been associated with. It's possible that those lawyers will get hauled before Congress and do to any investigation there Oliver North did to the e9/11 commission, which was to render it the farce that it always was from the beginning, that would be a good outcome, but this whole area ... what should be a closed chapter -- I don't see any national benefit to it...

Kristol:... I think now that the door is open, I say "bring it on." Let's have a big national debate on this. Let's have Steve Bradbury confront his accusers, who are one tenth the lawyers he is, and we're not under the pressure he was under and not a real threat. Let's have George Tenet testify. Let's have Mick Hagen testify. Let's have a serious debate, let's have Dick Cheney take on anyone that the left wants to produce about whether we were responsible, whether it was a dark chapter in our history that we have to be ashamed of or whether the US government behaved in a very fine way and I think a very impressive way...

Bloody Bill thinks Bush and Cheney's torturing of people is a very impressive way to handle prisoners.

I always love when right-wing hacks use the word "serious." It's only they who are the "serious" people, and therefore the world is only properly ruled by their hand. And he's confident that the propaganda that would be spewed by Cheney and his ilk will muddy up the waters enough to fool the American people.

Me, I'd like to see Cheney have to get in front of Henry Waxman.

I know Bill Kristol just loves the word "serious" whenever he talks about foreign policy so I wonder if he'll back up the Speaker on this one?

Pelosi: "I think what the President did in that regard was beneath the dignity of the office of the president and unworthy of our representation at that observance in Israel. And I would hope that any serious person would disassociate himself from the President's remarks who aspires to leadership in our country."